A collection of automotive stuff, restaurant/travel-related items and personal observations; mostly a lot of claptrap, really.

Nashville

Taken a few years ago at some joint on Broadway in Nashville, this was one of several photos with good-looking girls I had never laid eyes on before. It wasn't my birthday, but the Nissan crew was telling every attractive female we encountered that it was. Here's to getting older!

Friday, April 25, 2014

I'm not the kind of guy who shows off a
lot. I'm old, bald, fat and broke, which doesn't leave me a lot of
wriggle room for showing off.

But I did get to show off my city this
week to about 60 people – 40 or 50 of them had never been to
Greenville before. I was only too happy to bask in the deluge of
compliments rained down on me by my media brethren and Hyundai
internals attending the two-day function.

2015 Hyundai Genesis 5.0L next to Greenville's Cigar Warehouse.

The occasion was Hyundai's Southeast
media introduction for its redesigned 2015 Genesis. It attracted
motoring media from Texas to North Carolina.

For eight years I pestered Hyundai's
regional PR wonks to host an event in Greenville. My lobbying efforts
finally paid off. I'm no hero. I am, however, persistent and annoying
– apparently exactly the qualities required to convince a major
auto company to invest something north of $75,000 on an event in a
city that half the attendees had never heard of before booking their
flights.

Greenville's Westin Poinsett Hotel.

Hyundai chose downtown's Westin
Poinsett for our two-night stay. Yes, Hyundai was gracious enough to
put me up there as well, despite my living 15 minutes away. Because I
had some difficulty piloting the elevator back to my 9th-floor room
both nights, that I didn't have to get myself all the way home was a
good thing.

Enjoying some updates over the years,
the Westin is clean, comfortable and modern in an “Old South”
sort of way. It is centrally located to all the downtown attractions.
I had been in it a few times, but this was my first experience
overnighting there. It was quiet and the service top notch.

Although Main Street, where the Westin
sits and the test cars were staged, is often backed up for several
blocks, downtown Greenville is less than sprawling and we were
outside its confines in about five minutes as we sprinted for North
Carolina.

The next-generation Genesis was a good
fit for the Upstate, as the locals call the area surrounding
Greenville. Classy without being ostentatious pretty well describes
Greenville and Genesis.

When it hits dealer showrooms in a
month or so Genesis will be offered in two basic flavors: a $38,000
3.8L V6-equipped version and a $51,500 5.0L with its V8. For another
$2,500, you can opt for AWD on the 3.8L.

We had the opportunity to drive all
three Genesis configurations. Had I not followed it with wheel time
in the 5.0L, I would have been quite satisfied with the performance
of the 311-horsepower 3.8L. It spooled up and got itself briskly off
the line. Both the 5.0L and the 3.8L use an eight-speed,
driver-shiftable automatic transmission to hustle power to the rear
wheels – or all the wheels for those 3.8Ls so equipped.

As fine as the 3.8L is, its performance
was dwarfed by the 420-horsepower 5.0L. Goosing the accelerator on
the 5.0L was like being shot out of a cannon.

Hyundai found some terrific roads to
stretch out the Genesis and tax the bounds of its handling. Although
the route never had us more than 50 or 60 miles from my house, I
hadn't been on some of these roads. Rt. 178 north of Pickens, SC
was awesome.

Spending time in both front seat
positions as well as about 45 minutes in the backseat, I was
impressed with the comfort and support of all the seats. A
six-foot-plus passenger would have no shortage of rear-seat legroom.
In fact, Genesis has more interior passenger volume than any of its
core competitors, such as the Infiniti M, BMW 5 Series or
Mercedes-Benz E-Class. The craftsmanship and quality of materials
throughout the cabin are top shelf.

Lunch was at the Flat Rock Wood Room in
Hendersonville, NC. A curious pairing, it specializes in BBQ and
wood-fired pizza. I can't speak to the pizza, but the pulled pork was
exceptional. With eight local beers on tap and 15 or so other
microbrews in bottles and cans, they can expect to see me again.

Soby's as seen from the front drive of the Westin Poinsett.

Dinner our first night was a buffet at
Westin's Spoonbread Restaurant. The second night we walked across
Main Street to Soby's where Hyundai had reserved most of its
second-floor dining room and bar. Soby's is my usual Friday-night
hangout. I'm not exactly “Norm” there, but I am fairly well
known. As always the food was terrific and the service exceptional.

A bit of Hyundai decoration at Soby's.

I've been writing about cars and
participating in media events for 25 years or more; this was the
first time an event, other than maybe a lunch, has taken place in the
city where I live. It was a hoot.

A bit of Flat Rock Wood Room humor.

Hyundai isn't the only carmaker I've
hounded about doing an event in Greenville, but it was the first to
pull the trigger since I've lived here. This event is motivating me to turn up the heat on
some of the other car manufacturers I've discussed Greenville with.

If nothing else, I am persistent. And
how the hell else am I ever going to get to show off?

Sunday, April 20, 2014

I'm not the kind of guy who spends
hours and hours in front of the TV during the day despite working out
of my house. All of us who do that don't lounge around in our
bathrobes goofing off most the day. I at least make enough of a show
of working that I can convince myself that I am being productive.

Yes, I've figured out how to bamboozle
myself.

But I do record a lot of TV, not to
mention subscribing to Netflix and Amazon Prime. I have access to a
lot of TV programming.

Typically I have some older series
that's on Netflix or Amazon that I watch an episode of as I chow down
on lunch each day.

I really don't like any of these people.

The current series filling that role is
“Breaking Bad.”

This is a series that has a cult-like
following among its viewers. I never saw an episode while it was
airing original episodes. In fact, I wouldn't have even begun
watching it on Netflix if so many people hadn't recommended it with
such high praise. I don't get it.

I am now about halfway through season
four – it aired for five seasons – and I am only sticking with it
because I am in such wonder as how so many people I know could have
possibly been addicted to it.

I found season one to be fairly
interesting and entertaining, but my enthusiasm has been steadily
waning ever since.

The chemistry teacher and his underachiever former student.

Here's the premise: A high school
chemistry teacher discovers he has cancer. The best care, of course,
isn't covered by his insurance. He fully expects to kick the bucket.
His family is already teetering on the brink of financial ruin. He
not only needs to pay out of pocket for his care, but must accumulate
some money to leave his family. What to do; what to do....

He finds some wasteoid, drug-abuser
former student to go into business with. He cooks the meth, and the
kid hawks it. Adventures ensue as they have run-ins with competing
drug dealers, the Mexican cartel and so forth. Oh, did I mention that
his wife's brother is a DEA agent?

All of this takes place in Albuquerque.

Jonathan Banks plays Mike the enforcer.

First let me say that I don't usually
watch shows with characters I don't like. I don't mean shows with a
character I don't like, but shows that I can't find one character I
do like. Well into season four, I have only two characters among
either the core cast or reoccurring characters I can find anything
about which to like.

Bob Odenkirk plays the fast-talking attorney Saul.

I don't think it's a good sign that one
of these characters is an ambulance-chasing attorney played by Bob
Odenkirk and the other is Mike the drug-syndicate enforcer played by
recognizable character actor Jonathan Banks. I'm not kidding.

The meth cooker/chemistry teacher –
Walter White played by Alan Cranston – is a wretched excuse for a
human being who when not treating everyone around him as if they are
worthless crap, is elevating buffoonery to an art. Not an episode
goes by that I don't find myself muttering under my breath, “What
an idiot!” Here's a guy who should stay under the radar as much as
possible who in one episode manages to get himself pepper sprayed
during a routine traffic stop before being hauled to jail; and in
another episode blows up a brand-new Dodge Challenger he bought his
son the day before rather than return it to the dealership as he
promised his wife. He does this in a parking lot near the airport and
once again manages to get himself arrested. Then there was the
episode where he spent more than half of it chasing a fly around his
lab and nearly destroying it in the process. What an idiot....

His wife is a shrew, his disabled son
is a pain in the ass, his brother in law – my favorite character in
season one – is another pain in the ass, his wife's sister is a
thief and on and on and on.

The other thing that bothers me about
this show is that at times, it's just plain boring. I usually fast
forward through 10 to 15 minutes of each episode. There is at least
one commercial-break-to-commercial-break scene that is nothing but
two people sitting talking to one another. It goes on and on and on,
and doesn't do much to advance the story.

I continue watching this train wreck
because 1) it doesn't cost me anything and 2) I keep thinking it must
get better. I am losing my confidence in the latter.

I found "Weeds" to be a better "what if" of normal people suddenly thrust into the drug world.

The whole fish-out-of-water,
drug-dealer theme was done with better effect by “Weeds.”
Likeable characters and more believable behavior on the part of all
parties involved.

I like this entire cast.

Another show I am following is Fox's
“Rake.” It is sort of the antithesis of “Breaking Bad” for
me.

I like all the characters and there is
always something going on.

Keegan and his former-hooker pal.

Here's the premise: A sorry excuse for
a human being is a sex-addicted, gambling-addicted, yet brilliant,
lawyer. He owes every bookie, pimp and crook in town. He is
constantly helping an exhooker that he has a crush on. His boss and
good friend is the husband of an college fling.

The lawyer is Keegan Dean, engagingly
played by Greg Kinnear. It's not easy to make such a wreck of a human
likeable.

Sadly, I think after only a dozen or so
episodes, this series is circling the drain. Currently off Fox's
schedule, it has yet to be canceled, but it is in series purgatory.
It makes me sad.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

I'm not the kind of guy who gets all
giddy over the Honda Accord. I've always looked at it and the other
mid-size Japanese super star Toyota Camry as good, dependable cars
that are somewhere south of exciting. Owners love them, but aren't
usually in love with them. I like them for all the reasons their
owners love them, but I've never been passionate about either one.
(Insert yawn here.)

Accord V6 Coupe.

But I've had a couple of Accords of
late that caused me to reevaluate my opinion. Don't get me wrong, the
Accord wouldn't be on my long list, let alone my short list, of cars
to buy if I win the lottery; but I can now see myself actually owning
one under the right conditions. One of the Accords impressing me was
even – gasp – a hybrid.

I'm not a fan of hybrids – or the
whole idea of battery-powered cars. This technology is as old as the
automobile itself. As the 1800s morphed into the 1900s, there were
actually more battery-powered cars on the road than ones with
internal combustion engines. They eventually disappeared because of
issues with range. It's still the main problem with battery-powered
cars today. Tesla notwithstanding, if you want to go farther than you
can see from your upstairs window and return home the same day,
battery power won't get the job done. That's obviously a bit of an
exaggeration, but not by much.

Enter the hybrid. Most hybrids today
have a battery-powered electric motor that works in tandem with a
four-cylinder gasoline engine to power the car. Plug-in hybrids, on
the other hand, can power the car on their own for 25 to 30 miles
before running out of battery charge. At that time the
gasoline-powered engine takes over. Both hybrid systems add quite a
bit to the bottom-line cost of the car.

Accord Hybrid.

Even when supporting a hybrid system,
I'm not thrilled with battery-power. I think battery power is simply
a stop-gap technology until fuel cells or some other more efficient
technology arrives. But that's a discussion for another day. Back to
the Accord.

The Accord comes in both plug-in- and
traditional-hybrid forms. The one I really like is the Accord with
the traditional system. I had the top-of-the-line Touring version. At
$34,905, it's roughly only about $1,500 more expensive than the
gasoline-powered V6 Touring. That's not a bunch of cash difference as
hybrids go. The EPA estimates the hybrid will get 47 mpg in combined
city-highway driving; while the V6 just 26 mpg.

A bit of math reveals that if you drive
15,000 miles per year with gas at $3.75 per gallon, it will take just
about 18 months for the Accord's hybrid system to pay for itself. If
gas goes higher, it will take even less time. After that, you'll
pocket $1,100 or more each year rather than pumping it into your gas
tank. Not bad.

I was really pleased with the hybrid's
acceleration. No, it wasn't neck snapping, but its 226 lb-ft of
combined torque got the wheels turning in a hurry. I didn't feel like
I was losing anything to the V6.

The other Accord that dazzled me –
actually it's dazzling me now – is the Accord 2-Door with its
278-horsepower V6 and six-speed manual transmission. Honda delivered
the EX-L V6 Navigation for my week-long test. It retails at $32,400
whether equipped with the six-speed automatic tranny or the manual,
as mine was.

Okay, I'm going to say it: This Accord
is F-U-N to drive! I never thought I'd hear myself say – or write –
those words. It will hit 60 mph from a standstill in about six
seconds. Shifting is effortless with a clutch that's slicker than
mule snot.

The cabin is nicely appointed and uber comfortable.

I have another car in my driveway to
test this week, and I am going to have difficulty getting out of the
Accord to give it a chance.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

I'm not the kind of guy that bellyaches
about winter. It's winter; it's cold. End of story, get over
yourself. Having said that, though, I'm always ready for spring when
it finally arrives.

I never really thought spring had
arrived when I celebrated the Ceremonial First Mowing of My Dirt a
few weeks ago. I knew winter still had a little spit left in her, and
she did. Not that temps dropped into freezing territory, but we did
log more than a couple of nights in the high 30s after my premiere
mowing.

Nope. A better tell is that my big
azalea is in full bloom. This monster actually seemed to jump the gun
this year, but maybe not. When shopping for homes several years ago,
I saw my house for the first time in May – well after it bloomed.
I'm not enough of a plant/bush/shrub expert to have been able to
identify a non-blooming azalea as just that. I was shocked when the
thing bloomed my first April in the house. My family had an azalea
about the same size in our backyard in Louisville. I always wanted
one again, but South Florida isn't really conducive to azaleas.

Since moving into my house, I've
planted three more small azaleas next to the big one. The smaller
ones bloom at different times from the big one and often from one
another. It will be at least another week or two before another
springs to life. By that time, the big one will be done and all the
blooms gone. Timing is everything.

It may be a little difficult to see, but this is the hood of the Honda Ridgeline covered with pollen currently in my driveway.

The other giveaway that spring is
finally here is that every exterior surface on my property is covered
with a patina of yellow pollen – I mean every surface.
Although the moderate temperatures should have every window in my
house open, I keep the downstairs windows closed to keep the pollen
out. If I didn't, my furniture, kitchen counters, coffee maker and
everything else would be covered with this crap. It only lasts about
30 days, but is uber annoying for that month.

Monday, April 7, 2014

I'm not the kind of guy who hides his
eyes during nude scenes in movies. Despite the accent being on “guy,”
I don't watch a movie because it's reported to contain some nudity,
but I don't avert my eyes when it crops up either. Remember: guy!

Having said that; I lost three precious
hours of my life on Saturday night suffering through Martin
Scorsese's self-indulgent ode to Wall Street excess “The Wolf of
Wall Street.” If I did watch movies solely for the nudity, I would
have felt like I hit the six-number Powerball with “Wolf.”

Lots of nudity? You betcha! And some of
it was of the “full monty” variety.

Toss in the use of the F-bomb every 15
seconds or so and I was so numbed that by the beginning of hour
three, I hardly even noticed when a woman suddenly began prancing
around in her birthday suit.

Of course by hour three, I was fast
forwarding through huge swaths of the film.

Yes, the film is three – count them,
3 – hours long!

Apparently, Scorsese no longer feels
comfortable making a film without DiCaprio. Of the five films on
which they have collaborated, I actually like the first four: “Gangs
of New York,” “The Aviator,” “The Departed” and to a lesser
extent “Shutter Island.”

"Yes, you'll love it! You get to drop the F-bomb here, here, here, here and here...."

“Wolf,” though, was a bridge too
far.

Here's the plot 4-1-1: Real-life trader
Jordan Belfort – played by DiCaprio – wants to be rich and gets
himself hired by a well-established Wall Street brokerage company as
some sort of boiler-room phone jockey. Mentored by a low-moral broker
– played by Matthew McConaughey in an over-the-top, caricature-like
performance – Belfort sets off on the road to drugs and fraud.
Belfort finds himself out of work when the brokerage closes and
eventually starts his own firm where drugs, sex and fraud are its
staples. Belfort and his buddies all get filthy rich, and ever
further out of control. Eventually Belfort is indicted, goes to
prison and winds up back where he began. Yawn.

Beyond McConaughey, other supporting
cast members of note include Jonah Hill, Rob Reiner and Jon Favreau.
The list of hotties decorating the screen includes never-heard-ofs
Margot Robbie and Katarina Cas, both of whom are drop-dead gorgeous,
and we see in their full glory at least once in the film. It was the
only thing making this film watchable. Remember: guy!

Margot Robbie.

This would have been a much better
two-hour film or an even better 90-minute film. There are
excruciatingly long scenes of pure dialog that don't really advance
the plot, but do provide the DVD viewer with plenty of opportunity to
take a bathroom or snack-fetching break without pausing the movie.

After the third or fourth sex or
coke-sniffing scene, the audience probably grasped the
whole-decadence thing. Anything beyond was simply overkill. Another
half-dozen such scenes was a lot of overkill.

It was as though Scorsese simply
couldn't bring himself to edit his own film. “I am a genius and
this three-minute scene – one of several three minute scenes of
dialog or sex or drugs – is simply too wonderful to cut. Let's
leave it in!”

For the love of God, cut the scene!

When the end credits actually started
to roll, I heaved a sigh of relief. Thank-you, Jesus, it's over.

I'm so glad I didn't pony up 12 bucks
to see this turkey in the theater. The $1.59 it cost me at Red Box
was bad enough.

Friday, April 4, 2014

I'm not the kind of guy who embraces
yard work. In fact, I avoid it at all costs. It takes no more than a
glance at the moonscape that is my front yard to appreciate just how
little effort I put into its maintenance and the total lack of pride
I take in its appearance.

My front yard won't look any better than this as summer wears on.

Its utter ugliness, though, is as much
a product of my shortage of discretionary cash as it is my lack of
motivation. If I had the two or three grand to bring my grounds up to
snuff, I'd be doing other things with it like remodeling the upstairs
bathroom. The few dollars I have to invest in my property is better
spent doing other things.

Wheeling out my mower every 10 days or
so during warmer months is the one thing I just can't seem to escape.
I really don't mind the 90 minutes or so I must waste each week
beating back the few weeds able to survive in the dust bowl
surrounding my house. But I'd just as soon hire someone else to do
it. But, we're back to that discretionary-cash thing.

It has become a regular feature of
Clanging Bell to announce to readers the actual start of spring
signaled by the ceremonial First Mowing of My Dirt! Yes that mushroom
cloud of red dust filling Greenville's southern sky on Thursday was
caused by my first 2014 mowing.

I spent about an hour on Wednesday
putting a new blade on the mower, as well as changing the oil and
swapping out the old air filter with a new one. After filling the
tank with gas, I was shocked and pleased that the silly thing fired
up with the initial pull of the starter rope.

Mentally and emotionally exhausted by
my mower-maintenance episode, I pushed the contraption back into my
shed, putting off the actual mowing for another day. That “another
day” was Thursday.

I only had to perform a partial mowing.
The weediest areas received the bulk of my attention. Then, of
course, there is the unmowable area where the remains of a tree I
paid to have cut down last fall litter the landscape as a painful
reminder of why one should never pay a drive-by tree service before
the job is 100% completed.

Evidence you should never pay a drive-by tree service before they have completed the job.

On my list of things to do as the
weather warms up is to rent a chainsaw and cut up these remaining
logs into small enough pieces that the county will cart them away on
bulk-trash-pick-up day. That, however, is fodder for a future blog
posting.

In any event, you may celebrate the
actual beginning of spring. The mowing has begun.

My 4-1-1

I began covering the automotive industry in 1986, when I parlayed my position as a retail sales rep into helping conceptualize and establish a stand-alone automotive section for the Boca Raton News a Knight-Ridder newspaper in South Florida. In 1995 I moved to the Palm Beach Post to help develop its bi-weekly automotive pages. Leaving there in 2000, I freelanced car reviews to a variety of publications before assuming a senior editor position at AMI Autoworld magazine in 2001. While at AMI I helped launch NOPI Street Performance Compact magazine and was appointed its managing editor. I have been freelancing since leaving AMI in 2004. My regular outlets have included Hispanic Magazine, the Miami Herald, the Washington Times, the Journal-Register Newspapers, AAA Go magazine, MyCarData.com, Automotive Metrics, AutoTrader, Bankrate.com and Interest.com.

In addition to freelancing automotive reviews, from 1991 until 2001 I was supervising producer of the syndicated television series Discover America.